Walkout Over Danggo Role

Opposition wants former Speaker axed

Conrad Sangma

Shillong, Mar 24 : The Opposition today walked out of the Meghalaya Assembly after Speaker Charles Pyngrope rejected its demand to drop community and rural development minister Martin Danggo from the ministry over alleged largescale misappropriation of funds.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report has revealed a series of financial irregularities when Danggo was the Assembly Speaker from 2003 and 2008.

When the House assembled today, Opposition leader Conrad Sangma, quoting the CAG report, said the former Speaker and present minister in the Congress-led Meghalaya United Alliance government had incurred an expenditure of Rs 2.59crore for installation of several items at his official residence.

“Danggo had also maintained a gym at his official residence at the expense of public money,” Sangma alleged.

The Assembly secretariat had incurred an expenditure of Rs 2.24lakh for supply of exercise and related equipment ranging from cycles, treadmills, weights, TFT monitors and revolving chairs for the gym. Besides this, carpets worth Rs 23lakh were also laid out at his residence, air conditioners at a cost of Rs 7.34lakh, an inverter worth Rs 8.44lakh were also installed while an LCD TV worth Rs 11.81 lakh was also provided.

After Danggo vacated his residence in May 2008, he had only returned articles valued at Rs 12.48 lakh out of the Rs 65.25 lakh spent by the Assembly secretariat from 2005 to 2007. Items worth Rs 52.77 lakh were not returned and the Assembly secretariat had also not made any effort to recover the amount.

Danggo also did not return security-related items such as CCTVs, additional cameras and an intercom PABX valued at Rs 1.94 crore after he vacated his official residence.

Interestingly, the general administrative department (GAD) had not found the security-related items installed at his residence and no articles were left behind for the next occupant.

The CAG said Danggo alone had claimed Rs 90,000 as taxi fare by showing in the travelling allowance bills that he had visited many places during his foreign tour though actually he had not visited these places.

According to bills submitted by Danggo, he had returned to India from the foreign trip on October 21, 2006. However, the CAG, after crosschecking with the tour operator, found that he had actually returned to India on October 18 without completing the tour.

Sangma said given these corruption charges, chief minister D.D. Lapang should give an assurance in the House to drop Danggo from the ministry for the sake of transparency and accountability.

NCP legislator James Sangma also said the chief minister should take the CAG report seriously and drop Danggo from the ministry.

However, Speaker Pyngrope said the chief minister couldn’t make any statement since the CAG report was referred to the Assembly’s public accounts committee for conducting a probe into the allegations. Unhappy over the Speaker’s reply, the Opposition staged a walkout.